iiNet Pulls Plug on Internet Censorship

By Nick Haslem - March 23, 2009  

The Sydney Morning Herald has today announced that iiNet will be withdrawing from the trials for banning users from accessing sites on the Australian Communications and Media (ACMA) blacklist. In an article titled iiNet pulls out of net censorship, iiNet was quoted as saying it could not “reconcile participation in the trial with our corporate social responsibility”.

This move by iiNet comes on the back of their increasing concern of the fact that the websites on the blacklist leaked by Wikileaks does not contain just child porn and other material of illegal material. On these list were YouTube links, WikiPedia entries and online poker sites.

Michael Malone who is the Managing Director of iiNet went on to say this “We are not able to reconcile participation in the trial with our corporate social responsibility, our customer service objectives and our public position on censorship.” He then went on to state “It became increasingly clear that the trial was not simply about restricting child pornography or other such illegal material, but a much wider range of issues including what the Government simply describes as ‘unwanted material’ without an explanation of what that includes.”

The last poin that Malone makes is at the cusp of why there has been a public outcry of the ISP banning. The Australian Government has been trying to use this ISP banning as a means of controlling matters that they normally wouldn’t be able to. The Australian gambling industry is one area that the Government has targeted. They have secretly added sites to this list that have absolutely nothing to do with the initial intentions of the list.

The blacklist that was initially denied as being valid by Senator Conroy now admits that they “share some common URLs.” In fact this what he says there is quite the understatement. The list that Wikileaks made available to the public contained more URLs than the ACMA list because some of them have since been removed. The Wikileaks list included all of the URLs that had previously been on there or still currently are. Wikileaks have even gone as far to say that they offer directions on their website that can prove this is true. This further weakens Senator Conroy’s argument.

The last part of the Sydney Morning Herald’s article is something that we all should note. They say “Experts warned that Australian businesses could be added to the list in error, with little recourse. They would then be associated with child porn peddlers and sexual violence sites.” They couldn’t be any more correct in this statement. Anyone associated with the online gambling industry in Australia has been categorised by the Australian Government along with these other sites. Australian gambling sites like Australian gambling are considered to be as harmful and illegal as these sites on the list. Simply because we link to other sites on the list. it just doesn’t add up.

The University of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt was quoted as saying “Any person or corporation that would be identifiable on the list would potentially be deemed by the general public … either a child molester or at least in the same category as child molesters.” He then concluded “In effect, this could be interpreted by some as a government sanctioned hate list.”

Finally some common sense is starting to be seen by people in positions of power. Kudos to iiNet for taking a stance and not being a part of something that is taking away Australians rights. If you have a look through some of the videos we have here you will also find that many other people feel the same way along with Australia’s leading ISP Tesltra Bigpond.

If Australian online gambling was going in the wrong direction a few days ago, it has certainly turned around quickly. Senator Conroy and his department are finally starting to feel the pinch of the public and it has become highly unlikely that ISP banning will go ahead.

What does this mean for Australian gamblers? Well we can continue on our merry way bet whenever we feel like it. As it is our right to do so. The ANZAC’s fought for our freedom, we aren’t going to let a silly, small little politician take this away from us.